This is the part of the paper where I talk about the sale, right?
Well, sort of. Yes, the Tucson Weekly was part of a sale to 10/13 Communications along with Inside Tucson Business that will be complete on May 1. So, something is definitely going to happen. However, while there’s a lot of chatter online about what that something might be, as I type this out on Tuesday evening, there’s not really any news to report. We have some meetings this week with the new owners, so I assume by this time next week, we’ll have a sense of what’s to come, but for right now, I’ve been working like it’s business as usual. In this space next week, it might be a note from me telling you what to expect from the new owners or it might be my farewell to this gig. Either’s possible, although I hope it’s the former, not the latter.
In the meantime, I’m so happy to have Cord Jefferson in the pages of the Weekly. Cord was senior editor at GOOD, an editor at Gawker and is now writing for a TV show executive produced by LeBron James and grew up here in Tucson. His essay this week on what it means to love and leave a city is so incredibly good, if this happens to be among my last issues here, I’ll be happy to have gone out on a great note.
Also, we’re still trying out new things and trying to improve our coverage. This week, we debut a feature in the music section (tenatively) called Primer, which serves to introduce readers to a more established musical act coming to town they might not be familiar with. In this week’s debut, Joshua Levine talks about Japan’s Mono … why you should care about their music and where to start with their catalog. Let me know what you think.
Until next week.
This article appears in Apr 24-30, 2014.
I have a question: Are you a paper with an online presence or an online presence with a distributed paper copy?
The reason I ask is that I look under the music heading and no where in the drop down is there anything called “Primer” which sounded interesting enough to read, but since it’s not easily found…I’ll have to read it in the paper copy I have at home. You call it a feature, but it’s not listed on the Features page either. It’s a little confusing, especially to someone born before Pong but after the “Summer of Love”…
And I’m hoping they decide to leave everything alone at the TW, but if they don’t…I know I’ll be okay because I can always read Savage Love on-line.
Well Dan, I (and I suspect a lot of folks) have my fingers crossed hoping I’m not whistling past the graveyard. TW has been the most reliable source of information in the Baked Pueblo since we arrived here 21 years ago. Good luck to all of you (including even Danehy).
Hard to imagine Tucson with only the Daily Star afloat.
I saw this paper come into being 30 years ago and have been reading it for most of the entirety of its existence. I can only hope this purchase is not an attempt to kill the last bastion of in-depth reporting in paper format that Tucson has, nor to manipulate the reporting to push it Fox-like to the right.
I will say what many regular readers of the Weekly are thinking — if the Weekly does not continue pretty close to the same paper that it is now, i.e. fact-based, down-to-earth, progressive news/politics with occasional quirky articles and news, then I will be jumping ship faster than you can say Ice on the Rillito. That sturdy journalism and progressive opinion is the heart and soul of this weekly paper. It is reflective of its readers. Nothing else will be accepted here. If the paper does not keep up that tradition, complete with really good investigative journalism (not to mention The Skinny and The Range and Danehy and so forth) then Tucson will abandon it and it will die. If that happens hopefully another independent progressive paper with good investigative journalism will take its place.
But if it is retained in its current form with only minor cosmetic differences Tucson will continue to support it.
Nintz, and everybody there, please know that we will follow you wherever you land (or should you decide to start a competing paper). In the interim your readers will watch with trepidation and hope that The Weekly survives with its heart intact.
TS